I recently made a video on my YouTube channel about the Protestant doctrine of Perspicuity. In brief, the doctrine of perspicuity asserts that the text of the Bible is clear enough that normal, competent, well-meaning people should be able to read the text and come to the correct conclusion about what the Bible is trying to assert - at least on the important/core doctrines of the faith.
Yesterday I saw that the Lutheran apologist Javier Perdomo wrote a Substack post defending perspicuity, so I gave it a look. The following is a partial critique.
The Core Argument:
The main thrust of his argument is this: Catholics observe that competent, well-meaning Protestants read the Bible and come away with competing conclusions about what the text is trying to teach. And not just on trivial things - but on key stuff like:
- What Baptism does,
- What's going on in the Lord's Supper
- Whether one can forfeit salvation.
- Etc...
From that, we conclude the text must be insufficiently clear on those matters. Texts can, after all, convey various ideas with different levels of clarity. No one disputes that the New Testament says Paul was a Jew. They do dispute whether Paul would have baptized an infant.
Javier calls this argument the Ecclesialist Perspicuity Objection (EPO). I don't like that name. So I'm going to instead call it the Observational Argument Against Perspicuity (OAP).
The core of his rebuttal to this argument is an accusation that it is self-refuting. He says:
The self-refutation of the EPO is most readily seen at the level of argument evaluation: disagreement about whether the EPO succeeds as an argument—whether it is valid, whether its premises are sound, and whether the data it cites should even generate the conclusion it draws. It is essential to observe at the outset that evaluating whether the EPO succeeds as an argument is itself an instance of data interpretation. The EPO is a structured body of data—premises, inferential claims, evidentiary appeals—presented to competent interlocutors for evaluative judgment. To assess its validity is to interpret its logical structure. To assess its soundness is to interpret its empirical claims. To assess whether the phenomenon of Protestant disagreement should generate the EPO at all is to interpret that phenomenon and render a verdict about what it shows. There is no pre-interpretive vantage point from which the EPO can be evaluated. Every act of evaluating this argument is, in the relevant sense, an act of data interpretation—and therefore falls squarely within the scope of the EPO’s own criterion.
[Formed as a syllogism]
Major. Any body of data presented for interpretive evaluation that generates widespread and persistent disagreement among competent, good-faith interpreters about whether it constitutes a successful argument is, by the EPO’s own criterion, insufficiently clear to rationally compel acceptance of its conclusion.
Minor. The EPO, as a body of data presented for interpretive evaluation, generates widespread and persistent disagreement among competent, good-faith interpreters about whether it succeeds as an argument—about its validity, the soundness of its premises, and whether its evidential basis warrants its conclusion.
CI. Therefore, the EPO is insufficiently clear, as an argument, to rationally compel acceptance of its conclusion over the alternatives.
So, his basic argument is that the OAP somehow fails its own test. He proposes
1) That the OAP proposes that any body of data over which there is disagreement is one which cannot compel conclusions.
2) That people disagree about the soundness of the argument itself.
3) Therefore the OAP fails its own test and doesn't compel a conclusion.
Why this is a Silly Argument:
If you're going to say the OAP fails its own test, you need to carefully define what "its own test" actually is. The OAP doesn't just observe an ol' disagreement about any ol' "body of data". It's a specific type of disagreement. Javier's whole argument functions by papering over the difference between two types of disagreement with many, many, many words.
Those two types of disagreements are:
- People disagreeing about the meaning that a text is trying to convey.
- People disagreeing about the force of an argument.
Those are two distinct things. Take this example:
I say to my boys: "Boys, did you know that I'm the funniest man on earth?"
My boys reply: "How do you know that, dad?"
I explain: "Well, I've never met anyone funnier than me. And I can't imagine someone funnier than me."
My boys say: "That's a stupid argument, dad."
I reply: "My argument is super awesome!"
In this scenario:
We all understood what I was asserting.
We disagreed with me about the soundness of my argument.
Well, the OAP is about the first type of disagreement. It's about people disagreeing about what a text is asserting. That's where it's "test" of the OAP is about. If you want to say the OAP fails its own test, you'd have to show people reading articles by folks like Jimmy Akin and not agreeing about what he's trying to say.
Javier conflates that with the second type of disagreement - about people disagreeing about the logical force of an argument. Then he acts like the difference doesn't matter. In doing so, he applies a "test" which is irrelevant to the OAP.
He might reply: "Assessing the force of an argument is still an act of interpretation! So it's really the same thing!"
To which I'd say: It's just not.
When you are interpreting a text, you're looking at the little symbols called "letters" and translating that into ideas in your brain. When you're evaluating the force of an argument, you're taking those ideas and figuring out how they are related and whether they support one another. That's two different things you're doing in your head. You can't just pretend they're the same by calling them both "interpretation".
When are Things Unclear?
Another thing which occurred to me when I was reading this long, long, long article was this question:
How does he think people should conclude a text is unclear?
The Catholic argument is pretty commonsensical. If you see a bunch of smart people reading a text and coming away with opposing conclusions, it sure seems like the text is unclear (at least on those points). Javier says that observation is invalid and self-refuting. So when can we say a text is unclear in its meaning? What exactly are we supposed to observe to come to that conclusion?
Nowhere in the 10,000 words and 30 pages did he address that question. So when CAN we say something is unclear?
It's unclear.
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